Chapter One

Year: 2713 A.D.Time: Six-ish

The entire population of Universe 27048B was playing poker.

This is not as strange as it sounds, considering Universe 27048B had only five inhabitants—assuming you don’t count the innumerable swarms of artificially intelligent machines that maintained Stuck Station, and, really, who has time to do that?

Of the five inhabitants of Universe 27048B, four came from your universe (Universe 7C), and the fifth, the Destroyer, didn’t originate from any place you’ve ever heard of.

Of the five inhabitants, only one was human.

Jeska-Bel DotCom, the human, sat at a circular table in one of the 300,000 rec rooms on Stuck Station. She didn’t know the room’s name and didn’t care.

They were all the same anyway.

On the ceiling to Jeska's left, Prnei Star Nebula Galaxy — it doesn't translate well into English — reclined peacefully, absentmindedly flicking one of his ten tentacles in the air with a loud snap! every few minutes.

Directly beneath Prnei, the rock-skinned Anderson A. Anderson stood stone still, examining the cards he held in his energy prosthetics.

Across the table from Anderson, Riox the General lay face down, asleep in his cards, the lower half of his can-shaped body hovering a foot above the table.

The final player, the Destroyer, played poker by proxy.

He wasn’t in the rec room. He wouldn’t have fit.

And given that the rec room could have held all of Neo Yorkande-Boston, that’s saying something.

Stuck On: Words in boldface

As this story takes place in the 28th century, some terms will be unfamiliar to the 21st century reader. Thus, the author will place important words and phrases in boldface type on first reference.

The author will also continue to talk about himself in third person, and, if time travel permits, fourth person.

“Does silence mean, ‘Yes, we’ll let you out,’ in any of your languages?” the Destroyer asked.

“No,” Jeska said, gritting her teeth. “No. No. No. NO. NO. NO!”

“Ah,’ the Destroyer said. “How about now, dude?”

"Dude?!" Jeska said. "I'm not a—" She stopped herself, let out a sigh, and fought to keep her composure.

The Destroyer still pretended he couldn’t remember that Jeska was a woman.

Although Jeska repeatedly corrected him, the Destroyer had called her every possible word for male—everything from ancient terms like “dude,” “fella,” and “mister” to the more modern “de”, “masc,” and “@”—since she arrived on Stuck Station five years earlier.

And for the past four years, three weeks, six days, and twenty-three hours, Jeska had dreamed of smacking him in the face.

Not that he has any kind of face to smack, Jeska thought. I’d still like to try.

Thinking about it a moment longer, Jeska vetoed the “smacking the Destroyer’s face” daydream and thanked the Singularity gods that the Destroyer was trapped outside the station.

Then she told the Singularity gods to drop dead because she didn’t believe in them.

Then, after a glance at what she thought were opaque diamondglass windows dotting the rec room walls, Jeska shivered, apologized to the gods, and thanked them that she couldn’t see the Destroyer.

Jeska was misinformed: Stuck Station windows were not diamondglass, or opaque, or even windows. They were viewscreens. Each viewscreen showed real time images of Stuck Station's surroundings.

For safety reasons, the viewscreens were off. Always.

“We’re not letting you out,” Jeska said. “We’re going to sit here and play poker.”

“You guys suck,” the Destroyer said.

Despite his petulant tone, the Destroyer liked poker. If he played his cards right, literally, at the end of the game one of the crew would be dead.

“I am not a guy!” Jeska screamed.

The Destroyer laughed.

Stuck on: Diamondglass

From A Human’s Dictionary of The 28th Century (Now Updated Every Femtosecond)

Diamondglass: N. A colloquial human term for any transparent, near-indestructible material. A diamondglass substance is not necessarily made of diamond or glass.

In the 28th century, the most popular brands of diamondglass were Aldarium, the Sigma Hive Substance, and DotCom Eternalast Diamondglass.

As card players go, the cloud was good. As poker cheats go, it was great. As unwitting assassins go, it was perfect.

At least, the Destroyer hoped the last one was true.

The cloud called itself Q44–50978A-44408-C544 or Q44 for short. Like many clouds, Q44 was a gray patch of fog slowly spinning and churning back in on itself.

It was blurry too; the nanobots that made up its mass were too small to see without complex instruments.

Holding five cards near its center, Q44 looked like an out-of-focus cumulonimbus had decided to steal a hand from Texas Hold’em.

The Destroyer didn’t care what Q44 looked like. Appearance didn’t matter when it came to murder.

He silently ordered the cloud to begin Cheat 207, one of the many illegal poker moves he had taught the cloud over the millennia.

In keeping with station protocol, Q44 could not and would not assist the Destroyer in any way, other than by helping him play cards.

However, after enduring eons of the Destroyer’s arguments, Q44 recently—within the last 100 million years—agreed to help the Destroyer cheat at cards, too.

The idea of using deception had bothered the honest Q44, so it had run the Destroyer’s arguments by the The Containment Facility One Administrative Mind, the artificial intelligence that ran Stuck Station.

The Administrative Mind had given the ok, if only to stop the Destroyer’s whining.

As Q44 began Cheat 207, invisible tendrils of its body spread across the table, gliding by the coasters the crew used as betting chips.

Streams of trillions upon trillions of nanobots surrounded the deck of cards and began searching for their prize.

They floated easily through the fraction of an inch between each card and through the spaces between the molecules in the cards themselves.

The sheer number of nanobots helped Q44 quickly locate its goal—the Ace of Spades.

After finding the card, the machines disassembled it at the atomic level and carried the individual atoms back to Q44’s main body.

Then, they reassembled it behind Q44’s other cards, just out of sight of the crew.

Lastly—because the Destroyer had argued that secrecy was essential for the cheat—Q44 projected a scrambler field around the pilfered card, keeping it shielded from the prying sensors of other clouds and the station Administrative Mind.

The entire theft took thirty-five seconds.

None of the other players noticed.

Q44 didn’t like poker, cheating, or the Destroyer. And Q44 especially didn’t like helping the Destroyer cheat at poker.

The cloud would rather be defending its own collections or writing its memoirs, or anything, anything,
other than floating there, holding the Destroyer’s cards.

However, the station Administrative Mind had ordered Q44 to follow the Destroyer’s poker instructions, and Q44 had to obey. The Administrative Mind didn’t care that Q44 didn’t like it.

Q44 would have liked it even less if Q44 understood the real purpose of the cheat.

“Have I mentioned that this game is boring?” the Destroyer said.

“Yes,” Jeska said.

“Can I persuade any of you to play a game of Pac-Man with me?” the Destroyer asked. “Highest score is the winner? Let me out?”

It should come as no surprise that Pac-Man still exists more than seven hundred years after its creation. Humanity does not give up its diversions easily.

“I’ll play Pac-Man with you,” Prnei said from his repose on the ceiling.

“It is an honor to bring a friend to victory—” Prnei said, quoting a family proverb. Following his own advice, Prnei had folded as soon as he got his cards.

He lost every game he played; he considered every player his friend.

But before Prnei could finish the quotation, the Destroyer finished it for him.

"More so to keep friendship forever,” the Destroyer said, in a far-away voice.

That statement was uncharacteristic of Entity 107, Prnei thought.

Prnei always called the Destroyer by his Containment Facility One classification. He felt the term “the Destroyer,” though accurate, was too harsh.

As of late, Entity 107 has said things that are … odd,Prnei thought.

None of the other crew appeared to notice the change in the Destroyer’s tone, and, if they did, they didn’t show it. Stuck Station residents learned quickly to tune out most of what the Destroyer said.

"Woe to us. We have seen the end. We have seen the Destroyer. Our lives, our very worlds are forfeit to its mighty—Wait, are you writing this down? Not acceptable. These words are copyrigh—"

- the last words of Orohan,famed poet of Universe 5427C,just before the Destroyer
devoured her home planet.

“Poker? Pfft,” the Destroyer said with derision. “Now the Karkans of Universe 8,349,489D, they had a game that involved skill and strategy.

"They played for the lives of billions! They’d equip their planets with thrusters and their atmospheres with basic shielding …”

While he talked, the Destroyer signaled Q44 to begin the second phase of Cheat 207.

The cloud removed molecules from the top corners of the Destroyer’s Ace of Spades, whittling the card’s upper half to a point and adding the excised molecules to the sides of the cards.

After a few moments, the card resembled an smooth arrowhead pointing toward the ceiling.

Q44 didn’t see how changing the shape of a card would help win a poker game, but the Destroyer had said aerodynamics were an "important part of performing illegal poker moves."

Q44 had read the poker rulebook 374,443 times and didn’t find any mention of aerodynamics. However, it didn’t find any mention of cheating either, and Q44 had agreed to let the Destroyer do that as well.

The cloud assumed the problem was with the manual.

“The Karkans, you see," the Destroyer said, "had the entire propulsion system linked to the minds of the populace. The people would will themselves to smash into other worlds. It was beautiful, bizarre—”

“Before … you … ate … them,” Anderson said, bringing his cards near his central sensory node for a closer look. Anderson looked at his the cards the way his species did everything—slowly.

“Of course before I ate them.” the Destroyer snapped.

Q44 continued shaving the top of the card until it had a point so sharp it could pierce diamondglass.

The murder plot was eons in the making, and the Destroyer, a prisoner of Stuck Station for 2.7 billion years, had eons to spare.

He developed the assassination plan in the early days of his incarceration, when the second crew of Stuck Station, team You’ve Got to Be Kidding, explained to the Destroyer why they were using tiny paper rectangles to kill time.

Yes, cards predate the human race. Humanity also wasn’t the first species to develop the wheel, the steam engine, or Velcro.

Throughout the universe, cultures go through predictable growth patterns and certain useful devices and products are inevitable. Humanity was, however, the creator of Pac-Man, poker, and the double-cheeseburger.

Planning the murder had been the easy part. Given the Destroyer’s intellect, the time it took to conceive the scheme was close enough to zero to actually be zero.

The hard part was … everything after the easy part.

Convincing a Stuck Station crew to let the Destroyer play cards would have been simpler if every crew in Stuck Station history hadn’t disliked him. “Disliked” might not be the right word.

If the Destroyer had a checklist for his assassination plan, it would look something like this:

My Assassination Plan

By: The Destroyer

Age: Beyond Your Comprehension

Step One

Annoy one of the Stuck Station crews so much that they give me a cloud to use to play poker (estimated time to complete step: 2.6 billion years).

Step Two

Convince the cloud that cheating is part of playing cards (63 million years).

Step Three

Trick the cloud into unknowingly building a weapon (35.9 million years).

Step Four

Wait for a fragile enough species to board Stuck Station (100,000 years).

Step Five

Encourage the fragile crew member to play poker (300 years).

Step Six

Steal an extra card (35 seconds).

Step Seven

Build the weapon (35 minutes).

Step eight

Use the weapon (.1 second).

Step nine

Congratulate self (no longer than necessary).

Step ten

Escape (fifteen seconds).

Step eleven

Resume obliterating everything in every universe (as long as it takes).

The Destroyer was about halfway through step seven.

As he continued describing the Karkans and their world-smashing game, he ordered Q44 to add microscopic grooves and notches to the sides of the dart.

Q44 exuded an invisible mist of water vapor, the cloud equivalent of a sigh. To Q44, the Destroyer’s latest order made even less sense than changing the shape of the card.

“They’re victory grooves,” the Destroyer had said to him earlier. “It’s a poker tradition.”

Under normal circumstances, Q44 would have known he was building a weapon—there were entire sections of the cloud’s programming devoted to keeping anything weapon-like away from the Destroyer.

However, the Destroyer had spent ages using persuasive arguments to grind away at Q44’s resistance. If the Destroyer hadn’t, Q44 would have reported the now-deadly Ace of Spades to Stuck Station’s Administrative Mind right away.

It didn't have to be the Ace of Spades; any card would do. But the Destroyer had told Q44 to steal a specific card to make sure Q44 wouldn't figure out the plan.

The Destroyer theorized that if he had said he needed "any random card," Q44 may have guessed something was off.

As he watched his weapon form, the Destroyer examined his intended target.

“Where was I, before I was interrupted by an idiot?” the Destroyer asked.

“Ha,” Anderson said.

Anderson A. Anderson was not the Destroyer’s target; the dart wouldn’t have pierced his skin.

Anderson was a member of the Grebyan species, anda Grebyan's hide is one of the strongest known organic substances.

In the 28th century, Grebyan skin was the basis for starship hull material on at least 37,004 worlds. The fake skin works fine until it reaches 130 years old, the Grebyan age of puberty.

One species, the Makunal, unaware of that fact, had to forfeit a war, when, to their great embarrassment, they found their 130-year-old fleet covered in acne.

By coincidence, the common Grebyan name, Anderson, sounded the same as the human surname, Anderson.

Ages ago the Grebyan word was An Dar Suun andmeant Leader of the Wise. Due to centuries of linguistic change, it had become Anderson, a nonsense phrase. Anderson wished his name had the older connotation and not the current one: "Plastic Hat Again."

To most species, Anderson looked terrifying.

He stood seven feet tall, a pile of light-gray stone dotted with razor-sharp purple crystals. The crystals served as his sensory organs and vocal apparatus, and the largest mass of them covered protruded from his chest. Vaguely humanoid, he had two arms and two legs, but no head—his torso housed his brain.

After meeting Anderson, however, most species didn't think he was scary.

Yes, he could lift 100 tons. Yes, he could survive in the vacuum of space and under high gravitational pressure. Yes, he never got sick or tired.

But, like all Grebyans, he moved really, really, sloooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwlllllllllllly. His top speed was three miles per hour.

“So, before I ate the Karkans, I caught some memories from their minds," the Destroyer said. "And let me tell you, their game beat this monotonous—”

“You don’t have to play!” Jeska said.

Jeska would have been the Destroyer’s target, if she had been born five hundred years earlier.

From the dawn of human civilization to about the 22nd century, a nanobot-sharpened dart through the heart would have meant instant death to any human—not that nanobot-sharpened darts were common on Earth near the dawn of human civilization.

But at the end of the 22nd century, after the development of the nanobot cloud, things changed.

Jeska-Bel DotCom wasn’t just a post-cloud human; she was a post-cloud human from a rich, rich family. For her, a dart to the heart would mean momentary pain and ten seconds of rapid cloud surgery.

Nothing short of massive trauma or multiple organ failure could kill her. Her internal medical cloud was the best mommy and daddy could buy.

“Shouting is not necessary, Jeska,” Prnei said, trying to keep the peace.

Prnei wasn’t the Destroyer’s target either. The dart would kill Prnei if it struck the central nerve cluster under the skin between his two large, red eyes.

But the Destroyer had observed Prnei’s reflexes. Prnei had lightning in his limbs, and he could swat the dart away with ease.

That left one crewmember.

“As I was saying, the Karkan’s game beat—,” the Destroyer said.

“CHIRP!” said Riox, still face down, asleep in his cards.

“—this—” the Destroyer said.

“—CHIRP!—” Riox said again.

“—monotonous—”

“—CHIRP! CHIRP!” Riox said.

The Destroyer waited for Riox to stop snoring. At the start of the game, Riox had put up a valiant effort to stay awake. Then his condition overcame him.

When not passed out on a table, Riox the General looked like a dark-blue four-foot-tall cylinder, two feet in diameter, like all members of the Slell species.

Riox’s three eyes sat just above the source of the chirping sound: his sharp, yellow beak. He had long, skinny arms with a spike at both elbows, and his head was dotted with medals bonded to his skin.

Lighter than air, Riox had no legs. He moved by directing the constant streams of oxygen that sprayed from three sphincters, or jets, at his base. Right now, the jets were still, as he floated there unconscious.

That’s why the Destroyer had encouraged Riox to try poker, and today, after 300 years of the Destroyer’s urgings, Riox had agreed.

A thin-skinned creature, Riox’s body was a balloon of various light gasses. Though he had a medical cloud similar to Jeska’s, his delicate physiology rendered it useless against all but the most minor injuries.

A dart traveling through Riox’s frame at high speed would mean a popping sound and instant death.

Only one of the Destroyer’s 47 trillion minds was playing cards with the crew of Containment Facility One.

Most of the other minds were scanning Stuck Station for weak points, devising escape strategies, and thinking about freedom. A group of them were debating the merits of their planned murder, two were obsessed with the clavichord, and one wanted to try tacos.

The Destroyer’s minds were never in complete agreement.

But they did make decisions by majority vote. And the majority wanted the assassination to work, and the majority wanted to play Pac-Man.

The Pac-Man thing was a secondary objective.

“Are you sure I can’t persuade you to play Pac-Man with me?” the Destroyer asked the crew.

Pac-Man was a game invented on Earth 733 years earlier, and the Destroyer loved it the moment he saw Jeska play.

The game had been part of a bargain collection Jeska picked up at a sales-planetoid before she joined the Stuck Station crew.

The pack included Halo 48,889 and Immersive Wish Fulfillment Simulator. Sure, the programs were ancient, but Jeska had been bored and in a hurry when she got them.

Now she wished she had taken her time.

It turned out Pac-Man was the only program that would run on Stuck Station’s systems. Not because of technological incompatibility, but because someone stole the other two games before Jeska could add them to station memory.

Luckily Pac-Man had been so old the thief hadn’t even realized it was worth stealing. By the time the perpetrator came back to finish the job, the game’s code was already installed in the station’s Administrative Mind.

The crew knew the culprit well. But no matter how much they pleaded and threatened, they couldn’t get the other games back.

Now playing 20th century Pac-Man is great, as antique human activities go, but after a few months, it starts to get old.

But the Destroyer was addicted. He said he felt a kinship with the hungry yellow circle, though he shared no physical similarities with the game’s protagonist.

He empathized with a creature whose only goal was to devour everything, advance to another level, and then devour everything again.

The Destroyer played using voice commands, because the station’s Administrative Mind didn’t trust him enough to give him a cloud to interact with the computers.

A cloud to help him play cards was as far as the Administrative Mind was willing to go.

And, in about thirty-five minutes, it’d become obvious that the Administrative Mind shouldn’t have even done that.

“We didn’t ask you to join us,” Jeska said, through gritted teeth. “You can play Pac-Man by yourself.”

“But I want the thrill of victory,” the Destroyer said, managing to make a complaint sound inspiring. “There’s no point in eating ghosts, fruit, and white dots if you can’t do it faster than someone else.”

“We’re … not … play…ing … Pac … man,” Anderson said.

“Fine,” he said. “We’ll play poker.”

“We’re … al…read…y … play…ing,” Anderson said.

“You all cheat anyway,” he said.

“You cheat more than us!” Jeska said.

There was a pause.

“I’m better at it,” the Destroyer said.

“He … is … better,” Anderson said.

“Shut up,” Jeska said.

The poker game continued in silence for a half hour, except for the occasional snap, snap, snap of Prnei’s habitual tentacle flicking.

The Destroyer’s poker-playing cloud was now only five minutes away from finishing the weapon.

“We know what cards you had,” Prnei said. “Not only that, a few of them stuck to you when you passed out on the table."

Riox looked down and saw two cards plugging two of the twenty slit-shaped gills that dotted his body.

He coughed, trying to dislodge the cards. One fell out and dropped to the floor. He coughed harder, but the other card remained.

He sighed and gave up. He only needed a few open gills to breathe anyway. He was too inebriated to realize he could have pulled the card out with his hands.

“Deal me in,” Riox said. Then he belched.

“You must wait for the next round,” Prnei said.

“Oh,” Riox said. He hesitated, then said, “I love you guysh.”

“We know, Riox,” Jeska said.

Riox turned his attention to a snapping sound on the ceiling.

It was Prnei, still cracking a tentacle like a whip.

Snap.

It looked like Prnei's tentacle had a mind of its own. That would have been a ridiculous notion.

Snap.

The tentacle actually had three minds, like all of Prnei's tentacles. In each limb, one brain handled instincts, one brain handled reasoning, and one handled trivia.

Snap.

Unfortunately for the Prnei species, the increased number of minds did not give them an intellectual advantage.

Snap.

Though the thirty brains acted in tandem, each brain was quite small. Most species considered the Prnei species of average intelligence.

Snap.

As for Prnei the individual, he was only sometimes aware of his irritating habit. It was a motion of pure instinct: ten of Prnei's minds, the ones driven by ancient impulses, used the snapping to keep his body ready in case prey came near.

Snap.

“Would you shtop that?!” Riox said.

Prnei realized what he was doing and stopped, chagrined. He knew how much the sound annoyed the crew, and he tried to keep it to a minimum, especially when Riox was awake.

The sound gave Riox a splitting headache. Most sounds did.

Riox examined the room to remember where he was.

"Drunk and hung-over at the same time?" the Destroyer taunted.

“Alwaysh,” Riox said without malice, belched again, and fell back onto his cards, asleep.

Riox was wasted, but the crew knew it wasn’t his fault.

“Always nice to have a visit from our resident souse,” the Destroyer said.

With victory all-but-assured, some of Destroyer's minds considered taunting the crew about the inevitability of the murder plot's success.

The majority of the minds had decided against that.

No point jeopardizing the plan by boasting was the consensus.

So, the Destroyer tried to keep the crew distracted for a little while longer.

“Speaking of visits, where is the ever-helpful Containment Facility One Administrative Mind?" the Destroyer asked sarcastically. "She’s unusually quiet right now."

“Got … on … Jes… ka’s … nerves.” Anderson said.

“Jeska ordered her to be silent for a week.” Prnei said.

“That liar said I was ugly and fat,” Jeska said, without looking up.

“You know she doesn’t mean it,” Prnei said.

“You are fat and ugly,” the Destroyer said.

The Destroyer was, as was his want, lying. Jeska-Bel DotCom was born beautiful and got better-looking the longer you knew her.

Thanks to genetic enhancements and aesthetic upgrades—purchased by her parents when she was young—Jeska’s appearance literally kept improving over time.

In addition to her raven hair and dark brown eyes, her smile tended to interfere with the electrochemical processes in the minds of human males, and her warm voice multiplied the effect by a factor of six.

On Stuck Station, her looks meant nothing. There had never been a human male, or indeed any other human, aboard Containment Facility One.

“How 'bout if I win this round?” the Destroyer said. "I get to tell you my idea when I beat all of you at this stupid game."

“We … know … what … you’re … go…ing … to … say,” Anderson said.

“How can you know my mind?” the Destroyer said, with sudden passion. He always sounded more energetic when he boasted.

"Move ... it ... along," Anderson said, hoping beyond all hope that he could make the Destroyer stop his self-flattery.

“Do you know how much I condescend to talk with you?" the Destroyer said.

Anderson sighed.

"Speaking with creatures of your mental capacity is like Jeska holding a Q and A with plankton," the Destroyer said. "It's degrading.”

“And yet you keep right on talking,” Jeska said.

“What is plankton?” Prnei asked.

The Destroyer ignored him and said, “You think you can understand me? I am the most powerful thing in existence. I bend space-time like you move your limbs. I travel through the barriers between dimensions like you pass through the wind.”

“Ha. … Pass … wind,” Anderson said, trying to get a laugh from Jeska. She didn't even crack a smile.

Anderson was surprised. He had been sure scatological references were considered funny in human culture. Jeska had always laughed at them before.

“Here’s my idea,” Jeska said. She checked her cards again and felt confident. “You win this round, I won’t speak for a week. You lose, you don’t get to talk for a week.”

“As if I’d need to talk to you,” the Destroyer said.

“I don’t think you could stop talking for three minutes,” Jeska said.

“He’s … done … it … once … or … twice,” Anderson said. “The … few … times … he … lost … a … bet.”

“I take all stupid games very seriously,” the Destroyer said. “Pac-Man more so.”

“Deal?” Jeska said.

“Fine,” the Destroyer said. "You won't talk for a week, when I win."

"And?" Jeska asked.

"Something about me not talking," the Destroyer said.

"Say it," Jeska said.

"I won't talk if you win. Which will not happen," the Destroyer said.

"Good," Jeska said.

Q44 signaled the Destroyer; the weapon was finished.

The Destroyer admired the cloud's handiwork. What had been the Ace of Spades shined in the light—it didn’t look anything like a playing card anymore. Four inches tall and half an inch wide, it was a thin, polished arrowhead with lines and grooves etched into its sides.

Still made of paper, still white and black. But because of its rearranged molecules, the card was now the sharpest object on the station.

Jeska ran passed hundreds of empty, silent rooms. The only sounds were her footsteps.

“Where you running, Jeska?” the Destroyer asked.

She had no idea.

“There’s nowhere else to go,” the Destroyer said.

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”she yelled.

“Not a chance," the Destroyer said.

“Say anything else and I’m jumping out an airlock!" Jeska screamed. She wasn’t sure how serious she was about that threat, but it was becoming more appealing by the second.

“That’s too bad,” the Destroyer said. “Make sure you leave it open.”

Jeska had run twenty miles, but she wasn’t tired. She wasn’t even breathing heavily. Her internal medical cloud kept her running at full speed, breaking down the lactic acid her muscles created and turning it into more energy. She could run for days.

Lost in a fog of angry thoughts, Jeska was startled when Prnei suddenly lowered his head in front of her.

Prnei, who ran at full speed to catch up with Jeska, had intended to stop and have a face-to-upside-down-face chat with her.

But Jeska hadn’t been looking where she was running and collided with him at top speed. She tumbled to the ground, Prnei tumbled to the ceiling.

“Are you injured?” Prnei asked after he righted himself.

Then Jeska broke. She fell to the ground, wrapped her arms around her knees, and cried tears of rage.

Prnei looked her over from the ceiling. His eyes didn’t blink as he tried to think of something to say.

“—are ever able to leave the confines of this station for longer than .0004 seconds—” Prnei continued.

“I know, Prnei,” she said. She shouldn’t be angry with him. He was trying to comfort her.

“I have lived here for thirty-seven years—”Prnei said.

She tried to push her irritation aside. And failed.

“I know, Prnei!” she screamed. “I hate this place! I hate you! I hate the boredom and the threats and the Destroyer and the food and poker and Pac-Man and Anderson and Riox and clouds and you and me and everything, everything, EVERYTHING!…”

She stopped as her sobs overwhelmed her.

“Don’t forget me,” the Destroyer said.

“I said you!” Jeska said, through the tears.

“I know,” the Destroyer said. “Just pushing you further over the edge.”

Then Prnei did something dangerous—dangerous for any member of Prnei species, that is—he left the ceiling. Landing next to Jeska, Prnei wrapped eight of his ten arms around her. He had heard humans held one another to express sympathy.

Prnei’s embrace awakened in Jeska a deep-seated fear many 28th century humans have about being captured by a tentacled monster. Strangely, the embrace also made her feel safe. It was creepy and comforting at the same time.

Like the men in my life, Jeska thought.

The weak attempt at humor didn’t make her feel any better. Prnei’s hug did, a little.

“But you’re not going crazy,” Jeska said. “I just want out. I have to get out!”

She started to cry again, out of desperation this time, not fury.

“I’ve tried to find a way home,” she said, wiping her eyes. “But there isn’t any.”

Riox thought about it for a moment. It took great willpower for him to force out the mental fog. When he finally succeeded, he felt proud.

“What if there ish?” Riox asked.

Stuck On: Is vs. Ish

Riox the General is trying to say "Is," not "Ish."

"Is" is the third-person singular form of the verb “to be.” The Ish are an aquatic alien race that collects clichés.

Speaking of clichés, Riox's question (without the slur) already rests next to "Nothing can possibly go wrong" and "It's too quiet" in the melodrama section of the central phrase library on the Ish homeworld.